The Secret History of Hitler

Off-Topic Off Topic
#1

I’m a conservative, and Rush Limbaugh probably wouldn’t approve, but I’d like to see Oliver Stone’s Secret History of Hitler, which I understand is coming out this year on Showtime.

The more I learn of Hitler and his Nazis, the more I hate them. When I see color photos of him relaxing on the Berghof’s terrace, chatting with Fräulein Braun, or playing with Blondi or Eva’s two dogs, the overused, overworked cliché phase, ‘banality of evil’ comes to mind.

From what I read, Hitler was always courteous to his underlings, begging his secretaries’ pardon for ‘asking’ them to come into his office for dictation, patiently listening to their personal problems.

Too many younger people, in our video-games society, don’t have the foggiest idea of what led up to the Second World War. Hitler—they probably equate him as living at the same time as Genghis Khan. Don’t laugh—we had a receptionist at the firm where I worked who didn’t know the capital of England—and she graduated—probably to get her out of the school’s hair.

#2

:army:

I think the easiest way out of a situation is to hate first and learn later. Although I too hate the demonic things that happened during ww2, I have come to understand that all through history we have had demonic leaders from the time of Christ to current day. We talk and talk about history, but do we ever learn by it? We have studied Hitler until the cows come home, but what do we learn? There are new Hitlers amongst us, and we still did nothing to prevent it! I do not agree that Nazi’s are to be hated. My grandfather and family were members of the Nazi party, but I don’t hate them. I hate the man and the leaders who made it unjust for them to refute being members. they did not have a choice. If you did not pretend at least to be Nazi, you would suffer. Remember the movie Sound of Music and what happened when the Captain did not hang up the Nazi flag at his house? I do not agree to the generalization that we must all hate Nazi’s. They were Germans that were unfortunately forced to becopme members…and don’t tell me they could refuse…it was a different time back then. you just did and could not refuse, if you knew what was good for you, back then, so I am told, and so I have learned from my old relatives.
P.S. I do agree that Hitler was a monster !

#3

[QUOTE=I do not agree that Nazi’s are to be hated. ![/QUOTE]

It’s hard not to hate concentration-camp guards, Nazis, shoving helpless people into gas chambers.

#4

Agree, but throughout history and today we can find such individuals prepared to commit the worst atrocities for their political masters.

digger

#5

No excuse, of course. It’s always appalling to read of Nazi leaders–Himmler, for one–who were very fond of their children, and then went out and gave orders for other children to be ‘terminated.’ Of course, the SS–particularly when they started drafting into that group–picked up the worst trash to handle the dirty work.

#6

But even the worst trash was psychologically fucked up by their nasty KZ or Einsatzgruppen activity after a couple of months. Nazi authorities recognized that problem (“We’re breeding ourselves a bunch of psychopaths”), that’s why they oftenly chose to use KZ inmates or foreign auxiliary forces to do the dirty work.

#7

I find it harder to take the conduct of the Japanese and Koreans who were generally more mindlessly brutal, at least by Western standards, than the Nazis.

But less clinically and efficiently murderous than the Nazis.

There isn’t a country in the world right now that couldn’t find people to staff the equivalent of the Nazi and Japanese camps under similar, or even lesser, conditions than obtained under those regimes.

Some of those people are already serving in the military and police forces and prison services in every country. Some of them are already in prison as prisoners rather than warders, or will be in time, while most of them are in the community most of the time whether convicted or not. And some of them are just amusing themselves stubbing out their cigarettes on their de facto wife’s sorry little children of different fathers, or beating up people of different races in the street just because they’re different, and generally just being vicious mindless thugs.

And I’m talking there about Western countries which supposedly hold to high standards of liberty and respect for life, not the countless shitholes around the planet where such notions haven’t been heard of, let alone anyone making any attempt to observe them.

The problem with the concentration camp guards wasn’t them, but the system which allowed and ordered them to do what in most cases they did, willingly or not.

But it’s worth remembering that some of the worst offenders in the concentration camps were the kapos drawn from the prisoners. Whether they were worse to try to survive; or worse because they worked out their fear and anger on other prisoners; or worse just because they were bad is debatable and probably unknowable, but the fact remains that they were often worse than the Nazis running the camp.

So to be fair we should revile the kapos as much as we revile the guards, but they seem to have slipped through the moral cracks for some reason when it might be argued that they were doubly bad by turning on their own.

#8

Even as much as I’ve read about Nazi era Germany, I admit I’ve never been able to get a handle on how one of the most civilized countries in the world could have permitted what went on. Perhaps we should keep Germany in mind as an object lesson. Didn’t the Nazis use the system to obtain their ends? Hitler was, after all, legally appointed chancellor by President von Hindenburg.

I try to put myself back in, say, 1937, or so. I’m not sure just how brave I’d be myself in going up against Nazi thugs. Would I get up and give an old Jewish woman my seat on the trolley? Many Germans did, however, to show their disgust. I guess we all accommodate ourselves.

I had an older friend, who came from a wealthy Hungarian Jewish family. Marianne was very blonde as a young woman, and when the Nazis forced Admiral Horthy to abdicate and began rounding up Jews, talked herself out of being deported by claiming she was ‘Aryan.’ I can hardly blame her for that. She survived the Nazis and the Communists ‘allowed’ her to run, but not own, her own paint factory. During the 1956 revolution, she escaped to the United Kingdom, where she resumed her career as a paint chemist.

I hadn’t known that much about the treatment of Jews in Denmark–apparently they fared much, much better than those in France, for instance. Most of the population was saved, and even those who were sent off returned to find their homes intact, furniture not looted, and pets well cared for.

Thanks for the input.

#9

I’m not sure it was one of the most civilized nations in the world after WWI, any more than any of the other nations which participated in that appalling exercise in international butchery and inhumanity.

Hitler and many of his henchmen came out of that butchery and inhumanity, with a burden that the Allies didn’t of Germany being crushed by the terms of peace.

For whatever reasons, it encouraged them to want more war where probably most men on all sides who had been ground through that mill didn’t.

Among the reasons are probably that German civil society was ruptured towards the end of WWI by revolutionary impulses and events and subsequently by various civil and economic disruptions which made life in Germany much more difficult than in the Allied nations, and in part because of the harsh peace terms imposed upon Germany.

It might not have been all that different from the hostile sentiments which continued in the defeated South after the American Civil War, ably reinforced by the carpetbaggers etc.

We should definitely keep the Nazis in mind.

Didn’t Dubya and his tame law officials pervert the law to allow torture of terrorist suspects to obtain their ends?

Maybe, but how he got to that point is a different issue.

As a stupid headstrong teenager / early twenties when I had a bit of moral and less physical courage I might have, but once I had children to protect I probably wouldn’t have. I can’t imagine how people who, for example, hid Jews at their own and their families’ risk did it. I’m afraid I wouldn’t put my children at risk for a stranger. (Well, I would now, but when my children were young before I realised that I had sired a couple of arseholes I wouldn’t have. If only I had the choice now! :wink: :smiley: )

#10

Most evil is committed as a result of hatred. As we all know, sometimes evil people manipulate the emotions of the masses, fueling hatred, in order to achieve power and control. Waste of energy hating Hitler as he’s been dead for a while. Much better to promote justice and toleration, and be against those things which Hitler and his like represent - especialy hatred.

#11

We can’t forget Hitler; however, we seem to keep forgetting and thus repeating our mistakes. The fact that I’d like to know what made Hitler tick, and how he came to be what he was, doesn’t mean I endorse him. He probably started off no more anti-Semetic than any other German (or Frenchman, or Pole, or Brit, or American) of his time. After his mother died, the young Hitler wrote a letter of thanks to the Jewish doctor who cared for his mother, and to the end of his life, the doctor said that Hitler had been a devoted son.

#12

Big difference between not forgetting and learning lessons from history, and hating. However, people do have short, political memories and there have been tyrants throughout human history. This particular one has been a little closer to our time and there is much recorded evidence of this evil which can impact upon us more than that, say, of Ivan The Terrible.

The solution might be in education.

I think we all have equal potential for both good and evil, it realy depends on individual life experiences, and the levels of hunger for power within each of us, which brings out the best or worst of each of us.

#13

[QUOTE=32Bravo * * *

I think we all have equal potential for both good and evil, it realy depends on individual life experiences, and the levels of hunger for power within each of us, which brings out the best or worst of each of us.[/QUOTE]

Agreed. In the past, I’ve done some very brave things–or, if you prefer, stupid–mainly in coming up animal abusers, which, if I’d given it much thought, I’d probably have turned tail and ran. ‘What business is it of yours?’ My reply, in a particular instance: ‘I’m making it my business.’

I wonder if I’d been so brave had I come across a Brownshirt knocking around an old Jewish shopkeeper?

Each of us might surprise ourselves, to come upon that sudden cowardice or bravery.

#14

I don’t think we as a society are forgetting Hitler. He his underlings and his murderous regime are probably more under the microscope than ever before.

Ignorence, intolerence and hatred are bigger problems for our world today.

digger

#15

We should pay less attention to Hitler now than to the many other current regimes which grossly abuse human rights and engage in tribal, caste, racist, religious, and political oppression and slaughter, but most of them are in Africa, Asia and the Middle East (including Israel) and the level of Western interest in and response to them is determined by Western self-interest rather than concern for the proud principles of human rights which supposedly underpin Western democracies.

I am, of course, excluding actions by those Western powers, eternally pure of motive, which might be seen in similar terms by those subjected to Western military invasions and occupations, for these are but fine and noble acts by selfless powers concerned only to rid the world of weapons of mass distraction; avoid regime change at all costs; redefine waterboarding as ‘not torture’; engage in rendition programs which actually never happen; and generally jerk the public’s gherkin with propaganda of vastly greater deceit and impact than Goebbels could have hoped for on his best, or worst, day.

While the human rights activists in the affected countries are routinely oppressed and murdered.

Hitler is a metaphor for racist evil and extermination of opponents and people he didn’t like, but he’s long gone and has been replaced by countless other bastards of equally great evil, albeit generally on a smaller numerical scale.

Which isn’t any comfort to the victims of those regimes.

But they’re the leaders and regimes we should oppose now.

#16

Well said RS.

I guess the old ‘you’re either with us or you’re against us’ statement has shifted the world into a potentiall more lethal phase, than any time in history.

Wouldn’t be surprised if you disagree with that sentiment.:wink:

digger:)

#17

Maybe. :neutral:

But they’re the leaders and regimes we should oppose now.

Who, where, why, when and how should we choose to oppose?

RS: “I am, of course, excluding actions by those Western powers, eternally pure of motive, which might be seen in similar terms by those subjected to Western military invasions and occupations, for these are but fine and noble acts by selfless powers concerned only to rid the world of weapons of mass distraction; avoid regime change at all costs; redefine waterboarding as ‘not torture’; engage in rendition programs which actually never happen; and generally jerk the public’s gherkin with propaganda of vastly greater deceit and impact than Goebbels could have hoped for on his best, or worst, day.”

#18

Do you seriously think I would disagree with anyone who says I’ve said something well?

Most of the planet thinks I’m an idiot. According to my wife, anyway, who is an expert on everything. Except how to make me happy. :wink: :smiley:

#19

Who: For example, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the alleged government in Afghanistan.

Where: Depends. Mostly in our countries by denying them commercial and personal migration and participation.

Why:Because from the Western perspective they are sponsors of anti-Western terrorism and practitioners of primitive social oppression of women, as well being the antithesis of everything we stand for to do with human rights, liberty and basic human decency towards one another.

When: Now.

How: For a start, withdraw political and military support from them and tell them that they’re on their own. And mean it. For example, Saudi Arabia exists in its medieval shell largely because of American support for it, because of oil. The same with Pakistan to a lesser extent, but because there the bonus is Pakistan’s supposed support for the supposed ‘war against terror’.

But none of that will happen because all nations will do a deal with the devil to preserve their interests.

In which case none of them have the high moral ground to be too upset about Hitler, because in one way or another they are all equally corrupt, just not so directly.

As, for example, were the Yanks with the destruction in Chile of the emergence of liberty which the Yanks extol but would not allow the people of Chile to experience under their democratically elected Allende government, because it wasn’t the right sort of democracy and liberty for the Yanks.

#20

I heard, through a malt whisky induced fog, yesterday, that once an argument reaches a point where someone says: “…behaving like Hitler!” then the argument has deteriorated to apoint that there is nothing to be gained by continuing - or something to that effect.